U.S. sues PharMerica for fraud

The U.S. government just sued the long-term care pharmacy company for violating the False Claims Act and Controlled Substances Act. According to the government’s suit, PharMerica allegedly dispensed controlled substances without valid prescriptions and subsequently submitted false claims to Medicare for the illegally dispensed drugs, which included the highly abusive oxycodone and fentanyl.

The suit comes after an ex-PharMerica employee filed a whistleblower complaint against the company in July 2009. The employee claimed that between 2007 and 2009, PharMerica dispensed controlled drugs several thousand times without prescriptions and submitted false claims to Medicare at least 250 times.